AZ Alkmaar's coach Louis van Gaal, right, celebrates with staff and players after his side won the Eredivisie. Photograph: United Photos/Reuters

At the start of the season 12 of Holland's foremost football pundits were asked to predict the final standings of the season for Voetbal International's season guide. Ten picked Ajax to become champions and two backed PSV to win a fifth straight title. None chose AZ Alkmaar. In fact, none selected AZ to come second either. Varying from third to 13th, the sum of the pundits' votes predicted that AZ would come fifth or sixth.

However ludicrous they appear now, those picks were hard to fault. In the previous season AZ had come 11th and had even faced relegation, after blowing the title on the final day of the season prior to that. Near the end of 2007-08 the manager, Louis van Gaal, had decided to leave the club by the end of year, only to be swayed by a desperate squad. With hardly a new player of note and the same manager at the helm, there was not much reason to suspect things would be better this year.

Sure enough, AZ were hopeless in their first two Eredivisie games of the season. But after losing away to a spirited NAC, 2-1, and ADO, 3-0, something changed. In spite of claiming that the ADO game had been "AZ's best in six months", Van Gaal abandoned his stubbornness at long last and placed pragmatism before idealism, turning his side into a deadly counter-attacking team rather than a classical Dutch pressing-and-possession side.

The impact was immediate. At home to PSV, AZ managed to hold shape against the in-form defending champions long enough for Maarten Martens to score the only goal for the Alkmaarders with a nifty chip in the 82nd minute. Growing more comfortable with their system as the season progressed, their combination-football appeared ever more fluid and natural. Inevitably AZ passed their way to the most convincing championship in recent memory.

AZ had not even lost a league game since making the change until Saturday, when one last win would have assured the title. Before their adoring home crowd against a poor Vitesse side they had every chance of winning. But they blew it, losing 2-1.

"We were much better than Vitesse but just didn't play well," said van Gaal, flashing his inimitable logic. "The way their goals fell, it was unbelieveable. I told the lads in the dressing room that Vitesse's were lucky goals. You can't imagine this ahead of time, that you lose through two deflected shots." Indeed, Ricky van Wolfswinkel's goal had come courtesy of a lucky bounce off AZ defender Gill Swerts while Alexander Büttner saw his shot bounce off Swerts again and drop into the net after Mounir El Hamdaoui had given AZ the lead.

But the only remaining team with a mathematical chance of keeping AZ from glory, Ajax, took a 6-2 tonking at the hands of PSV on Sunday, making AZ champions by default. Deciding the title in the most anticlimactic of ways was fitting for a season defying logic and reason.

That was no comfort to Ajax. "This shouldn't be possible in a situation where a coaching staff and a squad have been training, talking, celebrating and mourning together for nearly 10 months," said Maarten Wijffels of Algemeen Dagblad.

But it was deserved. Despite seeing their 28-match unbeaten run come to an end, AZ's dominance was total. There were good wins, mediocre wins and bad wins. But they were wins, nonetheless, unlike last season. Championships, after all, are won in the bad games, not in the good ones.

The first champion not named Ajax, PSV or Feyenoord since 1981, when AZ won their only other championship, certainly benefited from an off-year by all the others. But to write this title off as a statistical aberration would do it wrong, as it was won fair and square, and the poor displays of their rivals was just as much a product of AZ's dominance as it was of their own dysfunctionality.

Many credit the chairman and owner, Dirk Scheringa, a wealthy banker who started out as a policeman, filling out friends' tax forms and supplying the occasional loan, who turned a failing club around. "Praise often concentrated on Van Gaal, the man allowed to complete Scheringa's life's work," wrote the columnist Chris van Nijnatten. "But this title has to be credited to Scheringa's account. In 15 years he built, with his own means, a big regional club."

Van Gaal, of course, credits himself. "It's incredible what we've achieved. The other clubs, Ajax, PSV and Feyenoord, have a much higher budget. We've had to make due with lesser players and lesser means," said Van Gaal, whose squad, however, is the best in the country and whose infrastructure and transfer budget are among the best.

"This is great for the players. For me, personally, this championship will be my greatest little masterpiece," he had said earlier, though there should have been a greater one – he failed to get the most talented Holland side of all time to the World Cup in 2002.

When he wanted to leave, the players "wanted to show that they are worthy of Louis van Gaal," added the aforementioned, whose neurosis is such that he even instructs the guy mowing the field how many millimetres the grass should measure.

But Van Gaal's love for tooting his own horn through a megaphone does not take away from AZ's performance. The 1981 AZ champions had a budget that was on a par with the 'Big Three', whereas the current squad lag a little behind. And, unlike 28 years ago, AZ have learned to put the fans first, taking to the streets right after Ajax's hammering, rather than celebrating privately, the way they did then. Van Gaal did lament his inability to address the crowd. "If I'd had a microphone it would have been more fun," he said. "The people do really want that – for me to talk to them."

Aside from now being AZ's longest-serving manager ever, Van Gaal also won his 12th big prize in charge of a Dutch side, equalling Guus Hiddink's record. Van Gaal now counts four domestic titles, a Champions League, a Uefa Cup, an Intercontinental Cup and some other scrap metal accumulated at Ajax and Barcelona, including a Liga title or two.

But life after Van Gaal, who plans one more season at AZ, looks just as promising. Their support in elementary schools in the Noord-Holland province, a bastion of Ajaxness, is now reputedly on a par with the giants from Amsterdam.

"AZ are the champions of hope," said Willem Vissers of De Volkskrant. "The province has struck again and victory has befallen Alkmaar."

"Once a year PSV become champions of the Netherlands," concluded Nik Kok of Algemeen Dagblad. "But not this year."

After 28 years the Eredivisie hegemony of Ajax, PSV and Feyenoord has been broken. AZ are the undisputed champions of the Netherlands. The kings are dead. Long live the king.